


red sunrise

by lusterrdust



Category: Archie Comics, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Death, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Drama, Feels, Lovers trying to reunite, Psychological Drama, Team as Family, Tragic Romance, bughead - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-10-13 23:49:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10524492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lusterrdust/pseuds/lusterrdust
Summary: "Lifting her hand up, her thumb twirls the band on her ring finger until the diamond digs into her pinky. She pushes the jewel against the skin until it stings, redirecting her emotional pain into the physical." [bughead, zombie au]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd
> 
> In honor/apprehension of AMC's The Walking Dead season finale tonight, here's my attempt at a zombie-esque au for our beloved characters. It will have dark themes, so be warned. If this type of fic is not your style, just click away. I am a huge lover of the horror genre and hope it meshes well into my writing.

 

 

 

 

> ▱◯♕
> 
> _Where am I supposed to lie_  
>  _if I can’t lie with you_  
>  _and the flesh that used to tingle_  
>  _has turned to marble blue_  
>  _and they tell me that_  
>  _we can never go back_  
>  _what am I to say to that_  
>  _—Civil Twilight, How’m I Supposed To Die_
> 
> ◯

_Diary,_

_I’m not sure where the line between humans and monsters lie these days. I’m not sure if there’s even a line anymore. Everything is red now. The color washes over every town and every person we come across. My hands are red, too. I’m losing sense of who I am… or maybe, who I was? I don’t know anymore. Pete says to survive, we have to make decisions now that we’d never imagine making before. But how am I supposed to look Rose in the eye anymore? How can I hold her after yesterday? How could I have lost control like that? Did we make the right choice? Did I? Letting those men die the way they did?_

_Maybe the gray-skins aren’t the monsters. Maybe we are._

A twig snaps nearby and the young woman lifts her gaze up from her writing in a panic, jolting to a standing position and unsheathing her weapon in preparation for an attack before her shoulders slump at the revealed intruder.

Beady eyes that reflect the dimmed embers from their campfire stare up at her, framed by a black mask of fur. A raccoon, nature’s bandit, brazenly staring up at her and the weapon pointed it without a care in the world. Her mouth waters at the sight of it. Months without meat, now in the dead fall, this critter comes walking into their camp; she has to act fast before it takes off.

Crouching down as slow as she can, her blue eyes never leave the animal still staring at her with its nose twitching in the air and she takes a step forward, only encouraged when it doesn’t move away.

The hilt of her machete is comfortable in her fist and she clutches the weapon before moving it in front of her in a slow but steady motion. Before she can strike however, the raccoon turns and dashes back into the bushel, the glimpse of his striped tail prominent to her memory before he’s out of sight for good.

“Crap.” She mutters, refraining a childish stomp at the animal’s hasty retreat. Her stomach growls in protest to the absence of a potential meal and she stomps back into camp, bending down to stuff her diary into her backpack before adjusting her shoulder holster as she sheathes her weapon back into place.

“That’s too bad he got away.” A deep voice from her left speaks, drawing her attention to the scruffy man sitting up in his makeshift bed.

“Yeah.” She sighs, looking back out toward the bushes before turning to give the man an inquisitive brow. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“So are you.” he responds, standing up and walking over the two people sleeping soundly beside him until he strikes a match and pulls a cigarette from his pocket.

“Those will kill you.” She tells him noncommittally, plopping back to the ground and pulling her pack close to lean her chin on.

He laughs through his exhale, the smoke billowing out into the chilled air. Leaning back against the bark of a tree, he regards her with a wry look. “Good. I’d rather these than the gray-skins.”

“FP—“

“Betty,” a gravelly voice interrupts as a hand falls to her shoulder, making the blonde jump as she swivels to come face to face with the elderly man addressing her. Brown eyes sunken in exhaustion but a kind smile on his face, he gives her a small apology for startling her before asking, “You ready for your shift?”

“Yeah,” Betty nods, pulling her pack over her shoulders before FP lifts his hand up, dropping the cigarette butt to the ground and stomping it into the dirt.

“I’ve got it, Pete.” He says, thumbs moving to hang through the belt loops of his stained jeans.

Betty frowns, standing up. “It’s my turn to take watch.”

“Don’t argue. You look like shit.” FP tells her bluntly, pulling a dry look from her. “All pale and sick looking,” he continues, gesturing a hand over his face to emphasize his point. “You’d better catch up on some sleep before someone mistakes you for a gray-skin and puts a bullet through your brain.”

As the older man, Pete, walks away, Betty narrows her gaze to FP in annoyance. “I’m more than capable of standing watch.”

“Never said you weren’t.”

“When are you going to get off my case, huh?” Betty fumes, her irritation sparked by his apathy to her frayed nerves. “You think I went too far yesterday, is that it? That I’m not in my right mind right now?”

“Look Cooper,” FP’s voice raises a notch, though still quiet enough to not disturb the camp or alert nearby gray-skins. He steps forward, not at all troubled with the proximity as his jaw clenches in annoyance. “You lost someone this week. I get it, I do. Hell, we’ve all lost people—“

She opens her mouth to speak before he raises a hand, cutting her off.

“—but you’d better pull your shit together quick.” He continues in a tone not to be argued with as his finger raises, slightly reminiscent of her father. “We’re risking our lives out here to find this damned military site you keep going on about. Yesterday was proof of that.”

Betty clenches her jaw as her eyes prickle with tears. Her palms begin to sting as she pushes her nails into them, breaking the skin. “He’s there, FP.”

FP sighs as his shoulders drop, his gaze almost pitying behind the pain in them. “Betty,”

“He _is_!” she whispers vehemently, ignoring the tight features of the older man’s face as she proclaims. “Your family, he was taking them there! He told me! Right before the phone lines cut off, he told me exactly where he was taking Gladys and Jellybean! They’re there. They have to be!”

He stays silent as she looks down at her boots and licks her lips, feeling the dried skin crack at the moisture before the sharp taste of copper lingers on her tongue. When he finally speaks, his voice is tight and his posture tense.

“They were in Manhattan, Betty...” he manages to get out through pursed lips. “In a hospital. Full of people, _surrounded_ by people—”

“Stop—“

“You’re a smart girl. You run those odds in your head.”

“Stop it!”

FP’s gaze hardens as he looks off into the thick of the blackened woods, eyes misting over. His inhale is sharp as he takes a moment to gather his composure. “As much as I’d like to believe my family made it out, we both know the chances that they managed to are slim to none.”

“Why are you so quick to give up on them?” Betty presses, chest tightened by his resign. Narrowing her eyes, she tilts her head to catch his gaze, not at all caring of the rising volume of her voice. “Why can’t you believe Jughead got them to safety?”

“Look around you, sweetheart!” FP finally snaps, glaring furiously while waving his arms around them, not aware that their argument has stirred those sleeping nearby into alertness. “We’re living among the dead with our fingers on the trigger every second of every day and you expect me to have what, _hope_ that my family’s still alive _despite_ all of that?” he chuckles abrasively, no humor in it. “Count the people we’ve lost so far! Your sister—“

“ _Don’t_ bring her into this!”

“Three people!” FP hisses, raising his fingers up between their faces. “Three people gone in the matter of seconds! And that was just one day ago! What about Jon? Trisha? Connie? Ethel?”

“Shut up—“

“Bernice, Eric, Maria, Hermione, Kevin—“

“I said _shut up_!”

The names he continues to ruthlessly list trigger Betty’s anger, prompting her to strike out. Thinking of the many people they’ve lost in the four months since the outbreak of the dead coming back to life with an appetite for flesh, Betty sees the faces of their fallen friends and family. She sees them every time she closes her eyes. She knows their stories and feels their absences in the long days left they stagger through to survive. People, good and bad alike, taken in the most brutal of ways.

Her hands push against FP’s shoulders in a jerked manner as she tries to stagger his stance. Infuriatingly, he doesn’t budge.

“My family’s dead, Cooper.” he tells her, only the slightest tremor to his voice as he stares, unfazed by her physical retaliation to his brunt words. “We’re going to Raven Rock because of the information you got out of those men yesterday, that’s it. If you want to delude yourself into wishing for some fantasy type miracle, be my guest. Just know you’re putting your girl’s safety on the line.”

Betty shakes her head, vision blurred with unshed tears. She pushes his words away, not believing them—desperately trying to not believe them. His family— _Jughead_ —he’s alive. He _has_ to be. “You’re an ass.”

FP’s jaw tightens as he looks away, his walls slamming up in a clear sign that their conversation is over. “Sticks and stones, sweetheart.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” Betty counters after a tense moment of silence, bringing her hand up to wipe at the tears clinging to her lashes and leaving trails in the caked dirt and blood on her cheeks. “This wouldn’t be the first time you gave up on them, would it?”

Without seeing how deep her words have cut, she brushes past him. “I’m going on watch. Don’t follow me.”

When she gets a short distance away, slightly out of her camp’s range, Betty folds. Bent over, her bloody palms press against her knees as she struggles to keep her sobs silent. Anguish courses through her veins and she succumbs to its lure to grieve, falling to her knees as her chest heaves with the images of her loved ones all gone.

She’s alone.

Alone in a world where catastrophic events have torn every person she’s held dear out of her grasp and into death’s arms with no mercy. Through her tears, her vision moves over to her left hand and her throat tightens. Maybe FP doesn’t have hope, but Betty does.

Through the horrors and terrors, she _has_ to have hope.

Lifting her hand up, her thumb twirls the band on her ring finger until the diamond digs into her pinky. She pushes the jewel against the skin until it stings, redirecting her emotional pain into the physical.

Hope.

She needs to hold onto it, otherwise… what is it all for?

To survive another day without really _living_. To put one foot in front of the other with no purpose or direction…

No, Betty hasn’t given up hope. She can’t.

Not yet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd - please forgive errors

 

 

 

> ▱◯♕
> 
> _“Don't be scared_  
>  _I'm still here_  
>  _No more time_  
>  _For crying dear”_  
>  _—Lee DeWyze, Blackbird Song_
> 
> ◯

_Diary,_

_I dreamt of him again last night. We were at Pop’s, drinking milkshakes and dipping our fries into them. His arm was around me and he was whispering something in my ear. I wish I could remember what he’d said… God, I miss his voice. I feel like I'm starting to forget what it sounds like._

_FP says I’ve been talking in my sleep, but so does he. So does Joaquin, and Jamie and Carrie and Pete. Maybe we’re all trapped in nightmares. Maybe they’re just as terrifying as the ones we experience while awake. Rose cries, too. She calls for Polly and I can feel the black pit inside me fester. I don’t know, diary… I keep praying for a miracle but maybe my luck’s been exhausted. I just don’t know anymore._

… … …

It was a Saturday when the world went to hell.

Jughead was out of town, visiting a sick relative from his mother’s side of the family while Betty stayed home and planned the move they’d be making to New York when he returned. She’d walked to FP’s trailer to pick up the pick-up he’d been working on in another attempt to make up for some trivial argument with his son she has no recollection of what’d it been over now.

And then gunfire.

Sirens and gunfire, Betty can piece together the snippets of panic through it all. She remembers hearing of the strange illness on the news—she recalls her mother bringing it up in conversation days prior. She doesn’t know why they’d been so out of touch with the reality of the world around them. Maybe it was their small town. Maybe it was the generation’s aloofness to anything outside of self-interest. Maybe it would’ve helped so many who’d perished in the heat of it all.

She remembers calling Jughead in a panic on the phone, only getting a concise explanation of where he was heading in a veil of static. She remembers FP shoving her in the truck and driving her away from the military tanks that had started to roll onto Riverdale’s main street. She remembers screaming at him, to go back for her family—but he’d refused. She’d been hysterical, gripping his flanneled sleeve as he drove them past the town lines and shaking him with every ounce of strength she could muster before he screamed something at her during the height of her panic.

Her world had been obliterated.

But he’d been forced to follow her after she stubbornly attempted to trek her way back home for her family five days later. They didn’t have to get to Riverdale to meet up with a group of survivors near ten miles from them. Her sister had been amongst the peculiar group, along with her three-year-old niece.

_“Betty—M-Mom, and Dad…”_

Even through the desperate choking, Betty understood the unspoken words her sister couldn’t get out as they clung onto one another. The change in Polly’s eyes—afflicted with a fear and anguish she’d never seen before, Betty had choked back her own grief as the wave of their reality crashed on her again, and again.

… … …

It's an old boarded up church near the Indiana state line that they find themselves in now, the roof and rafters nearly dilapidated from lack of upkeep and the pews from inside pried apart and nailed to the windows and doors, allowing only strips of light to slip through onto the splintered floorboards beneath them.

It carries a musty smell to it, like mold and decay, but it's a smell that's become all too common these days. In her arms lays her niece; red curls sit atop her head, dominated by chubby cheeks and puffy eyes that are glossed over with crocodile tears. Those bright eyes, tinted red with the exertion of crying look up at Betty as her fingers dig into her vest in a familiar embrace.

"Shh," Betty hushes gently, running her hand over Rose’s forehead, pushing the curls back. A small hiss leaves her lips as her ribs cry out in protest at the action—the injury a result of crossing paths with thugs on the road. “It’s okay, sweetie. I’m here.”

Quiet footsteps pad over her way and she sees the outline of Joaquin’s silhouette before his face becomes visible to the dwindling candlelight from nearby. There's a hesitancy to break the silence in those eyes staring down at her, but Betty knows an offer to help by now. Nodding to the space beside her, the man settles to her right and reaches for the toddler.

She doesn’t know if Joaquin would’ve been a friend to her if life hadn’t become what it did. She knew little of who he was before the outbreak; just a Serpent and conniving punk who played Kevin for a fool.

Betty can remember loathing him for betraying her friend.

Yet now, he’s like her brother. Her rock in this uncertain world that threatens to rip them apart at any moment.

“She’s hungry.” Betty frowns, barely making out the pallor color of her once rosy cheeked niece and the sharp contours of the bones peeking from under the collar of her bluebird dress.

“Aren’t we all.” Joaquin responds quietly, rocking the child whose cries are simmering down gently in his arms. "I’m getting sick of cold string beans.”

“Well, I’ll take cold string beans over starvation any day.” Betty retorts, looking around to the small group that’s spread themselves out over the floorboards.    

She sees the instant Joaquin wants to insist she get some rest. His mouth curves into a grimace and the unsureness in his eyes speak with more volume than any words he refrains from voicing.

“Don’t say it.”

Joaquin merely shakes his head, rubbing circles into Rose’s back and lulling her into a drowsy state that Betty’s thankful for.

“When’s the last time you got some sleep?” she opens her mouth to retort before he cuts in once more with a pointed look, “ _Actual_ sleep. Not just a few minutes of rest here and there.”

Betty looks down and props her elbows onto her knees, grimacing at the red on her nails. In a different life, it would’ve merely been polish, but that’s not the case now. Now, the red is the dried and crackling blood of friends and foes. “I’ll be fine.”

Joaquin’s quiet for a moment before he tilts his head, catching her gaze. “That wasn’t my question.”

“I know.” She whispers, turning her head to observe the few others with them. Jamie and Carrie, the couple who managed to stay together since the beginning. Betty doesn’t envy them—just their assurance that the other is okay. They’d learned Jamie was a Navy veteran; he’d taught their group proper gun procedure and etiquette, and with the addition of Carrie, who’d been a student trying to get into the RN program, they’d been lucky to end up in the pair’s company.

Then there’s Pete. A retired garbage collector, he was blunt, but overall the most logical thinker of them all.

She notices little traits about her group. She notices that Jamie scratches his scraggly beard when he’s uncertain. She notices Carrie murmurs under her breath when she cleans her weapons, giving herself verbal instructions each assembly and disassembling. She notices Pete likes to whittle. Sculptures like birds and dogs, he drags his pocket knife over every wood piece he can find.

With FP, Betty notices the tick in his hands. The itch for the cigarettes he’s tried pacing himself the last few weeks with, in order to stretch their use. He’s also incredibly intelligent, not that she should’ve really been surprised. Jughead _was_ his son. But he’s not smart in the way Jughead is. No, he carries a street smart mentality—using his words and charisma as his true weapons against the few hostile incidents they’d come across in recent travels. Though the yellow crowbar hanging from his leather belt is intimidating, it’s his quick thinking that does the most damage and ultimately, keeps them safe.

And then there’s Joaquin. Quiet and reserved Joaquin. A former snake, he’s the type of fellow to stop and appreciate the stillness around them. A world gone to shit, yet a simple man in leather, he takes the time to stop and smell the roses; metaphorically and literally.

Betty herself feels unchanged.

Logically, she knows there’s so much about her that’s changed, but inside, she feels stagnant. Like Dorothy, cast up in a tornado and thrown into a different reality. She wants nothing more than to click her red slippers three times and go home.

Except there is no home. Not like before.

There is only here and now, and that’s the sad truth.

Maybe home is with your loved ones, but Betty’s running short on those as well. When she closes her eyes, she sees Polly being ripped apart by the gray-skins while she thrusts Rose in her arms in a sacrifice to save her daughter. She sees Jughead on one knee in front of her, smile spread across his face as she lifts her hands to her mouth with an excited squeal. Both are equally gut wrenching in their different respects.

“Please, Betty?” Joaquin tries again with a grimace as Rose lies lax against his chest, finally spent with exhaustion as she’d given into slumber. “Just an hour at most.”

Betty’s tongue darts out as she nods, relenting to his request. “Okay. An hour.”

Joaquin releases a sigh. “Good.”

“Wake me up, okay?”

“Okay.”

Betty watches as Joaquin rubs his fingers over the child's cheek softly, murmuring whispered words of comfort and well wishes for happy dreams. He’s grown a soft spot for the child, as had the rest of the group. It’s been so long since they’ve seen any children and she doesn’t want to linger on the _why_ of that.

As Betty lays down, tucking her hands under her head, she lets the creak of the old church lull her into rest. The large stained glass window above the pulpit gleams with various shades of colors from the light of the moon, pouring through the images of Saints long dead and washing the group in dim evening's glow. The large cross sculpture below it casts a shadow over Betty’s chest and she can't fight the bitterness it fills her with.

She’d once believed the figure to be a promise of hope, of mercy and grace—

The only penitence she feels now is failing those who’d she’d tried keeping safe.  

_“—etts, Raven Rock!...ybean and mom, I’m taking them there…Pennsylv…Bett…meet me th…find m—”_

_“Jughead!? Jughead!”_

_“Take her! Betty, take Rose! Now! Run! Go!”_

_“Polly, no—“_

_“Go!”_

Betty clenches her eyes shut as she turns away from the dim light, rolling until she’s immersed in the darkness of the room once more. Only when Joaquin places Rose beside her, the child breathing in deep, even breaths—only then does Betty succumb to sleep.

… … …

The blisters on her feet throb with every step taken as she wanders the streets of a small town in Ohio. She knows the second she makes it back to camp her socks will be stained with blood and pus.

Crouching beside a car that doesn’t look too roughed up for what feels like the millionth time that day, she sticks the hose in her grip inside it and tries to suck any gas that might still be inside. Relief washes over her when she discovers there is some, and she brings the red tub in her other hand close to deposit the gasoline into.

The sun is scorching, and the flimsy tee she has on clings to her like a second skin, soaking up the sweat she’s built up through hours of walking and running in the heat. Wiping a hand over her forehead, Betty turns her gaze upward to the sky before the sounds of snarling nearby has her tense in fear.

Gray-skins, a group of them, are down the street, oblivious to her presence. Sucking in a sharp breath, her eyes dart to the buildings nearby as she searches the area for the rest of her party.

Not seeing anyone, she stays crouched while moving to the nearest building. It’s a run-down café that she enters, and a heave of relief escapes her when she notices its vacancy. Standing up, Betty switches the tub of gasoline to her other hand as she quietly shuffles behind the counter, hoping to find a backway exit.

To her left however, there’s a display that catches her interest; a large corkboard stapled with dozens of little papers that have all sorts of names written on them. At the very top, in bold purple letters, she reads;

**_KIDS FOR KICKING CANCER! LAVA JAVA CHARITY DONATORS_ **

Blue eyes scan the wall of names, the papers now faded with time into dingy brown, but their black and bold ink still legible.

"Oh," She whispers to herself as her gaze falls to small polaroids beneath the papers; all arranged in a zig-zag shape, different children smile up at her from the pictures, some with tubes in their noses, some with little hair, some with none at all…

“Hell,” a voice startles her as she whips around, unsheathing her machete and leveling it with the unflinching face of her _sort-of_ father-in-law.

FP raises a brow at her as Betty exhales in irritation at being startled. Her weapon lowers back into its holster as she grimaces at him. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t lose track of your surroundings.” He retorts, unperturbed. 

“I didn’t.”

His gaze moves away, staring at the photos of the sick children behind her. The way his face falls, only slightly, reminds her so much of Jughead. The resemblance is harrowing sometimes, and the ache at missing him only amplifies. But when FP speaks again, she’s pulled from her thoughts as she listens intently.

“You know, when Jughead was little,” he begins, eyes flickering over the board. “he won a prize for a story he wrote on leukemia.”

Betty looks at FP, engrossed and starved for any talk of her fiancé.

“I remember that.” She whispers, taken back to a simpler time when her troubles were silly things like losing a prize from a writer’s contest the local grocery store held. Her arms fold over her chest as she looks back to the board. “I was a little jealous for not winning.”

FP chuckles, but it’s dry and hollow. “The prize was three hundred dollars. You know what he did with it?” she doesn’t answer, because he’s not really asking her. “My nephew Paul, or as we called him, Souphead—Jug bought him a telescope. He’d always wanted one. Hell, my brother and I used to listen to him and Jug talk about constellations and aliens for _hours_ … said they were going to be the first astronaut twins to travel space.”

Betty remains silent as she listens, absorbing the story intently.

“They looked a lot alike, near identical.” FP continues, eyes distant as he loses himself to a memory. “But when they turned eight, Soup, he uh, got sick. Real sick.”

The faces in the photos are strangers, but Betty tries to picture a child that looks like Jughead in them. Her chest burns and her fingers tighten around the hilt of her machete just to squeeze something.

“Jughead was devastated. He heard about the contest and begged Gladys and I to let him enter. He wanted that prize money for Souphead. Thought he could buy a cure or something, but when we explained why he couldn’t, that’s when he got that telescope.” The man beside her reaches out and runs a dirt covered finger over the photo of a young boy, perhaps envisioning the same thing she’d been moments earlier. “They spent hours looking through that thing in the hospital. He died later that night.”

Betty swallows the sandpaper feeling in her throat and stares at FP with something akin to sympathy. A few moments pass in strained silence until she breaks it with a broken whisper. “I’m sorry.”

FP blinks, pulled back from his daze as her voice registers through his trek down his memories. He looks to her and holds her stare with a deep sadness and a bit of imploration. “You really think they made it?”

A surge of heaviness hits Betty as her gaze moves back up to the papers of written names with a prolonged scan. She moves forward to pluck one off the wall before handing it to FP.

 _Hope_ , it reads.

“I do.” She answers, watching as his face flickers with emotions she can’t decipher before it steels back into his normal gaze of composure. But his eyes, so much like Jughead’s, they stare at her with the barest hint of gratitude.

He pockets the paper before pulling a half-burnt cigarette from his chest pocket. “I wasn’t the best dad to Jughead or Jellybean. I didn’t pay as much attention as I should’ve. I just wish they knew that I...”

Betty blinks, frowning slightly as she sees the genuine regret in his eyes when his voice trails off.

“They knew, FP.” She says, furrowing her brows. “Jughead knew. That’s why he never gave up on you. He loved you.”

She sees FP’s adam’s apple bob as he tries to retain his composure. He swipes his nose in an attempt to appear like her words haven’t struck a deep chord in him and places the cigarette to his lips, letting it hang there before pulling his lighter out.

“I know one thing.” He tells her seriously, inclining his head forward to her. “You were the best thing that happened to him.”

The swell of her throat expands the longer she stares at the older man, feeling the weight of his words hit her like a semi-truck. She shakes her head and looks to her shoes, wiping the dampness from her eyes.

“No…” she manages tremulously, “He was the best thing to happen to me.”

There’s a slight pause as they stand there, the sounds of the dead outside growing louder with each second passed. When FP clamps his hand onto her shoulder, squeezing just tight enough to portray the gratefulness of her admittance to him, Betty takes a deep breath in to collect herself.

“Let’s go, kid.” He says gruffly before walking away.

She nods, wiping at her eyes once more before following FP out the back of the building to their group.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd

 

> ▱◯♕
> 
> _“The trouble is, you think you have time.”_  
>  _—Buddha_
> 
> ◯

_Diary,_

_Rose is sick and I'm at a complete loss at what to do. If I lose her, ~~I can’t even think about~~_

_I’m not going to lose her… Carrie’s getting medicine for her—some antibiotics. She’s going to be fine. The snow’s getting too high to walk through but Carrie will be back soon. She only went to scavenge at the clinic a few blocks away. She says there might be something there for Rose. There has to be._

_... ... ...._

Sometimes it’s the silence that can be the most deafening.

Trudging through snow covered roads, Pete tries to keep conversation light between the group, but Betty’s deaf to any words spoken. She holds Rose to her chest tightly, the little girl tucked under her shirt to give extra warmth. Joaquin and FP trek ahead of them, searching for a safe place to take refuge until the storm passes, but she can hear the coughs and sniffles from Carrie and Jamie at the tail of their group, and she can feel Rose's against her chest. They’re in danger—not from gray-skins, Betty realizes, but of the elements around them.

“D-don’t w-worry,” Pete stutters out next to her, squinting his eyes to find some type of coverage for them. “We-we’ll find—“

He doesn’t finish before a scream tears through the air, startling their group. Betty's head whips back to see Jamie running up to his fallen wife. Gray hands and low moans reach their ears and there’s no hesitance on the bearded man’s part as he stomps his boot down onto the decayed face of the near frozen gray-skin. A sickly sound erupts as the snow is painted with dark red. Pieces of brain cling to Carrie’s terrified face as she stumbles to get back up on her feet.

“They’re underneath!” the woman cries, finally getting over some of the initial shock as she wipes the dangling bits off her face.

“Watch your step!” FP suddenly announces as his eyes sweep across the mounds of snow surrounding them. Betty sees his mind ticking as they all tense in the knowledge they could be pulled down at any moment by a hidden gray-skin. “We need shelter. Now. The nearest town is eight miles west—“

“Raven Rock is east—“ Betty manages through chattered teeth, clutching Rose to her as the idea of walking back stirs a panic inside her. She doesn't want to turn back—not when they've come so far. However, when Rose coughs loudly against her, she’s torn between logic and feeling. 

“We need somewhere to stay.” FP cuts her off in an indisputable tone. “We go east.”

There are no other gray-skins as they make it back to the last town passed—or at least none they can see, most of them having been likely frozen stiff and buried under the rising snow. Betty’s body is barely moving as they push through the stinging wind and icy gusts. Despite the weakness she feels deep in her joints and aching muscles, she forces herself to push harder. It feels like a lifetime before FP spots a small housing community through the blanketed visibility, but once they reach the nearest house, she’s more than eager to rest up for the night.

Breaking in is easy. The garage door left open, probably left in that state during the rush to leave during the outbreak, Joaquin makes quick movements of picking the lock of the side door leading into the home’s interior.

The group hurries inside, escaping the brutal winds. Standing stiff in her frozen state, Betty watches FP and Jamie give each other pointed looks before they're volunteering to search the house while the rest of them wait for the signal that all is safe. 

It's then that Rose begins to fuss against Betty, gripping her hair and tugging with what little strength she has. “Momma,”

“Shh, Rosie, we need to be quiet.” Betty tries to console, ignoring her sister’s unintentional mentioning as she bounces the toddler in her arms. Alarm sets in when she notices Rose’s labored breathing. She presses her hand against the little girl’s neck, counting the breaths and feeling an internal panic when she discovers how uneven it is. Turning to Carrie, Betty’s eyes widen as her heart begins to race. “S-Something’s wrong!”

“What?” The older woman moves forward, startled at Betty's frantic tone as she presses her hand against Rose’s neck as well. “She’s shaking.”

“W-what do I—“ Betty scrambles to understand what’s going on as Carrie pulls the toddler from her. Her breath is sharp and visible in the air as she tries to make sense of what Carrie’s tone is implying. “Is she okay? Is she going to be okay?!”

Pete pulls off his coat and holds it out in an offering. “Here. We should warm her up.”

“She’s got a fever.” Carrie shakes her head, pushing her hand out to stop the man’s coat from draping over them. She turns back to Betty and questions quickly, “You didn’t feel her burning up?”

“I—“ Betty feels a knife to her gut as she realizes she hadn’t, because she _couldn’t_. Her body feels numb from the cold. She’s shivering from it, even more so now as fear takes its hold on her. “I…”

“She's had a cough for a few days.” Carrie turns back to the toddler, moving her hand down to press against her small chest. “She’s congested. I—She needs medicine. This could be pneumonia.”

“Pneumonia?” Betty exhales roughly as her voice wavers. “Wh—“

“She needs antibiotics. Immediately.”

When Rose is placed back in her arms, Betty clutches her close and finally notices the light sheen of sweat over the toddler’s forehead as she pushes back the red damp flyaways clinging to the skin. Guilt gnarls itself in her gut for not noticing sooner and her tongue suddenly feels too heavy to move in reply to Carrie’s statement that she’s leaving to find medicine.

“Leaving?” Jamie’s voice draws their attention as they turn to see the younger man and FP emerge from the dark hall. He walks up to Carrie and shakes his head.

“You’re sick.” Carrie states adamantly, resting her hands on the lapels of her husband’s jacket before gesturing toward Betty’s direction. “So is Rose. We need medicine—“

“It’s too dangerous.” Jamie states in disapproval.

“So is waiting for a disease to spread!”

“I’ll go.” FP speaks up, forcing Betty to snap her gaze to him in an even more heightened panic. The look he gives her is one of reassurance, but she’s not comforted. Before she can protest however, Carrie fires back.

“No. If something happens you need to be here. Both of you.” She tells FP before looking intently at her husband. “I’m quick, you know I am.”

“I’ll go with you.” Joaquin volunteers, giving Jamie a nod as he offers Carrie assistance.

“There’s a clinic we passed only a few blocks down.” Carrie adds, accepting the former Serpent's help. “There might be other stuff there as well. You know Joaquin and I are the quickest on our feet. We’ll be in and out.”

After a few minutes of Jamie protesting, only to relent when the realization there’s no other choice, only then does the group settle for a long night of anticipation and unease.

Betty can do nothing but rock a trembling Rose into what she hopes won't be an entirely unsettled night’s rest. Shaking and murmuring, Rose coughs and shivers for the next few hours. Betty only knows time has passed when FP comes to view and sits beside her, reaching out to relieve her of the child.

“I thought you were on watch.” She states, her eyes never leaving Rose.

FP merely imitates her earlier action and rocks the little girl to his chest. When Betty sees the heartache clear in his eyes, she’s hit with the painful reminder that he’s done this before—with Jughead and Jellybean. And based on the pained look in his eye, it’s clear his thoughts aren’t far off from her own.

“It’s been three hours.” FP states finally, tearing his eyes away from the child to glance at her. “Pete took over.”

Looking to her right where the old man had been sitting earlier, she only notices now that he’s no longer there. “Oh.”

“You need to rest, Betty.” FP informs her with a grimace. “Before you argue, just try for at least a half hour. You need to be in your right mind when Carrie and Joaquin get back with the medicine.”

“But I—“

“You’ll be more help to Rosie when you’re rested.” He tilts his head, giving a nod when she bites her lip in consideration. “I’ve got her.”

Swallowing thickly, Betty relents, nodding as her hand moves out to caress Rose’s cheek. It’s hot to the touch and she can’t help but feel a dark shadow spread through her chest at the notice. “Just thirty minutes.”

However, when Betty pulls her backpack close to rest her head on, she finds that sleep refuses to come for her. There’s too much going on in her head. There’s too much static and she inhales sharply when a stinging on her palms snaps her from her thoughts. Lifting her hands, she feels her eyes water at the red crescent marks glaring back at her.

When she clenches her eyes shut, Betty sees Jughead in front of her. She feels his hands cup her own before he lifts them up. She can feel the pressure of his lips on her skin, the slight chapped drag of his kiss. She can see the bright blue of his eyes as he stares at her with open vulnerability. A choked sob creeps up her throat but she presses her palm to her mouth, smothering it. Sitting up, she digs into her pack for her diary and a pen—using the items as a distraction as she veers her thoughts away from the man she’s spent months searching for.

The taste of blood settles on her tongue but she’s immune to it by now. The metallic copper-y taste is like a familiar plague to her taste buds.

“Rose?”

Betty snaps her eyes up from the page she'd been writing on to FP. A spike of fear rockets through her veins at the sight of it mirrored on FP’s face and in his tone. She’s at his side in an instant, pulling Rose into her arms.

Her hands are shaking as she lowers her ear to the little girl’s chest, only to feel her stomach sink through her shoes when she doesn’t hear a heartbeat. “..n-no..” Her hands press against the flushed skin of her niece before one lowers to grip around the mouth no longer giving small puffs of breath, shaking her slightly. “Rose? Rose?!”

FP rips her from Betty’s arms, laying her down onto the floor before the heel of his palm pushes down on her chest. In the midst of her hysteria, Betty doesn’t hear or see Jamie come to her side; her sole focus is in watching with panicked eyes as FP continues his compressions.

“FP!” Betty sobs, looking to him before she's clutching Rose’s limp hand. She wants to ask if Rose will be okay. She wants to speak but she can’t. She can hear herself crying, she can feel the sharp sensation in her chest—the shortness of breath and manic distress at seeing her niece lying limp on the floor in front of her.

 _Save her!_ Betty wants to scream as FP tilts Rose’s head back before pinching her nose shut and leaning down to breathe in the child's mouth.

“Oh god—!”

“Come on, Rose!” FP grunts, moving back to his compressions. His eyes are wild, determined.

“What happened?!” Jamie questions in distress beside Betty before he breaks out into a coughing spasm. 

“S-she—“

“Come on!” FP growls again, louder this time as his determination morphs into something fiercer like desperation. 

Betty dips her head and drops her lips to Rose’s tiny hand still clenched in her own. She feels unattached from her body the longer FP works to revive Rose. Time no longer exists; only the gut wrenching grief seizing all thought and feeling from her.

“No!” Betty shakes her head frantically, clenching her eyes shut as she wills this nightmare to end. When she opens them, she wants to be back in her room, Polly at her side and Jughead’s hand in hers. She wants to see Rose in her mother’s arms and her dad drinking coffee at the table and reading the paper. She doesn't want _this_. 

But this isn’t a nightmare.

At least, not in its usual sense.

This is reality, and in an ironic twist of fate, it’s so much worse.

There’s a racket toward the end of the hall, but Betty doesn’t notice.

She doesn’t notice Joaquin staggering through the door from outside, limping and bloodied. She doesn’t notice an unconscious Carrie between him and Pete, the two of them carrying her limp body. Betty doesn’t notice the lack of pills or the horror on Jamie’s face when the man stands up from his position at her side.

She doesn’t hear his cry when discovering the torn flesh of his wife’s exposed neck.

She doesn’t hear them exclaim about the herd heading their way or the fact that they need to leave _right now._

Betty only notices the cold touch of her niece’s hand, and the cold wind on her tear stained cheeks.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ubeta'd - there are errors, i'm sure

 

 

> ▱◯♕
> 
> _"Monsters are real. Ghosts are real, too.  
>  __They live inside us, and sometimes they win.”_  
>  _—Stephen King_
> 
> ◯

"I got us some food."

Betty looks up from where her face had been tucked between her knees as FP pulls himself up into the railcar they’ve holed themselves in over the last few days. The look she gives him is a blank one, causing him to sigh and settle onto a wooden crate across from her as the silence between them stretches out uncomfortably.

Holding the dead rabbit in his hand, FP pulls the knife from his waist and tilts his head to catch Betty’s gaze. “You up to skinning it?”

“No, thanks.” She answers, turning away from him.

With a defeated sigh, he ties the animal to his belt and walks back outside. It takes a short while, but eventually he gathers enough pieces of wood for a fire and skins the animal, watching with tired eyes as the sun begins to set over them, casting shadows through the abandoned buildings nearby.  

"Can you help set up a fire?" he asks her a short time later after depositing the wood onto the floor outside their railcar.

Betty stays silent, her eyes still vacant.

"Betty.” He presses, losing some of his patience.

“…Yeah. Yeah, I’ll light it.” She finally answers, pushing herself up and slinking out onto the ground below. Her body is frail, he notices. This past winter has been hard for them. Painfully so. Her shirt looks too loose on her, and he can see the peek of her hip bones jutting out from just above the waist of her jeans. FP exhales through his nose and cuts the meat down with a harder hand to cook over the small flame she’s working on.

“I think we’re getting close to Raven Rock.” He says after a few moments of lingering silence. “Adam’s County should be another day’s walk. Maybe two.”

“What’s the point anymore?” Betty answers after a minute of silence. Her eyes move up to catch his own, and he frowns at the haunted look in them. “It’s been nearly a year.”

FP clenches his jaw and feels the little positivity he’d been forcing himself to display for her sake fall away. He snorts derisively. “So much for not giving up, huh?”

Betty narrows her eyes at him, the anger overshadowed by the haze of tears pooling on her lash line. “I’m just preparing myself for the worst.”

“We’re _in_ the worst, Cooper.” he scoffs scathingly, throwing his arm up and gesturing to the wasteland of the town they’re currently in. The place, like everything around them, is a wreck. Broken glass leading into stores that have all been cleared out, smashed cars and decaying bodies and bones littering the streets… the world is a mass graveyard now.

Rubbing a dirty flannelled sleeve over his brow, FP exhales in frustration, trying his best to speak in a light tone. “Look,”

“The fire’s ready.” Betty speaks over him, throwing the remaining pieces of twigs into the flame before standing up and walking to the railcar.

“You have to let go of it.”

Betty inhales sharply, clenching the iron bar at the side of the abandoned railcar. Her heart races as her breathing picks up pace.

 _How_ , she wants to ask. How can she get over everything that’s happened? It’s like FP’s asking her to change the color of the sky. The darkness—the part of her she’d battled internally before the world went to shit—it’s consumed her and conglomerated itself in a nasty entanglement of anger, guilt, and heartache.

“You don’t kno—“

“Don’t even go there, sweetheart.” He grits out, hunching back down to adjust the meat over the flame. His voice is sharp, and his eyes even sharper. Betty snaps her mouth shut, clenching her jaw as she looks away. “You’re not the only person who’s lost people. Get over it. That’s surviving now. Move on.”

He's intimidating as he regards her, but Betty doesn't flinch. "You've got some nerve—"

"No, _you_ have nerve." he interrupts, pointing the bloodied skinning knife still in his hand at her. “You’re alive. We both are! You think it’s been sunshine and daises for me? What happened in Newark wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t mine. It’s just the world we live in now. This is the hand we’ve been dealt. _Plain. And. Simple_.”

“Plain and simple?” She glares, finally turning on her heel and clenching her fingers into her palms as she sneers at the man who would’ve been her father-in-law in a different reality. “ _Simple_? There’s nothing _simple_ about watching the people you love get _ripped_ apart! There’s nothing plain or _simple_ about watching someone you love get their fucking _throat_ sliced for a mistake _you_ made! There was nothing _simple_ about watching Rose die because I was too fucking stupid to realize she was sick! I could’ve—I, I should’ve—“  

He’s in front of her suddenly, embracing her as she buries her head into his chest. Her eyes clench as the frenzied panic in her own chest seizes all sense of speech. FP smells like sweat and grime, but Betty takes his offered comfort despite having been angry at his seconds earlier with eager relent. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine it’s her father, stroking her hair and chasing the monsters under her bed away.

FP doesn’t tell coddle her with false promises or sympathies. He knows she’s not naïve enough to believe them even if he were to.

Betty sees through his stoic façade some nights when he thinks she’s asleep. She’s seen the shake of his shoulders as his body’s turned away from her own during his turns on watch. She hears his heavy breathing as he fights to regain control of his sporadic emotions. In his embrace now, Betty doesn’t cry. Truthfully, she doesn’t think she has any tears left.

Eventually, the panic in her chest alleviates, and she pulls away before following him to the dwindling fire.

She hasn’t eaten in days, but when FP rips a piece of meat from the bone of the rabbit he’d charred, her mouth waters and she reaches slowly before giving a curt nod of thanks to him.

Raven Rock…

God, she hopes there’s something there. She hopes the journey and lives lost trying to get there aren’t for naught. She hopes the rumors of the military base is true and there’s sanctuary.

Survival is a double-edged sword now; Fighting for life, but not having the chance to live it... Being alive when the people you’d loved aren’t…

Betty doesn’t believe Jughead is alive anymore. If he is, a small, horrible part of her hopes she doesn’t find him. Because with this life now, the only guarantee is death, and there’s no way she can lose him twice.  

Snarls and moans catch their attention as their heads snap up from their positions. Outlined by dusk’s horizon, Betty sees a good sized group of gray-skins heading their way and their dinner is cut short. Tossing the bones in his fingers to the fire, FP quickly snuffs the flame out with his boot before pointing to the railcar. “Grab our things!”

Betty sprints to the car, pushing herself into the small space before grabbing their bags and running back to him. Slinging her own bag over her shoulder, she clutches the hilt of her machete and follows FP into the dead of the night.

Running, it’s all they ever do now.

… … …

Jamie had blamed Betty for his wife’s death hours before his own.

They’d made it out of Newark four days after burning Rose and Carrie’s bodies. The snow had melted and ceased in falling, but the temperatures were far from ideal. The luxury of staying holed up in the house they were in was taken away when the sound of raiders woke them all in the night, forcing them back onto the road to avoid trouble.

Betty didn’t blame Jamie for his anger, but she was numb to it at first.

The piercing glares and aggressive remarks...

FP had been on watch, Joaquin with him, leaving Betty alone with Jamie and Pete. The older man had been transparently conflicted in trying to offer comfort while alleviating the tension brewing in their silence.

For Betty, she may as well have been a ragdoll. Her body worked when she needed it to, that was it. Everything else was like a fog. Hunched over her knees, she sat there quietly until Pete made an innocent comment, setting the younger bearded man off despite its aim to comfort.

“Everything will get better?!” Jamie had hissed, burying his knife into the ground beside him angrily. “How about you shut the fuck up for once, old man? There isn’t nothing better about where we’re going!”

Pete had blushed scarlet, his mouth agape at the angered response.

“Raven Rock—“ he scoffed, moving his narrowed gaze up to Betty as she continued to stare blankly ahead. “Because _you_ want to go there. FP doesn’t listen to the rest of us, or where _we_ want to go. It’s all about you, isn’t it, blondie?”

“Jamie, come on, now…” Pete had tried to intervene, but Jamie wasn’t having it.

He’d stood up from his spot and walked over to her, his knife still in hand. On instinct, Betty shot to her own feet and placed her hand on her gun before Pete stepped before her.

“All of _this_ ,” Jamie gestured over the old man’s shoulder, “is your fault. You should’ve been the one to get your girl’s shit. Not Carrie!”

“Don’t talk about her.” Betty finally found her voice, an inkling of fire risen at the man’s provocation with the mention of her neice. “Don’t fucking dare.”

Pete huffed uncomfortably. “Let’s just take a minute to—“

Jamie pushed the man to the side, cutting him off before grabbing Betty’s arm and dragging her forward in a jerky motion. “You killed that little girl and my wife. _You_ kept pushing for us to walk through the that goddamned storm—you—“

“ _Hey_!” FP was there before Betty could even blink or push the man off her, Joaquin instantly at his side. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“You okay?” Joaquin grabbed her elbow, frowning at the mark there from Jamie’s grip. Betty didn’t have a chance to answer before Jamie’s fist connected with FP’s cheek, erupting their already dwindling group to chaos.

The brawl between the two men pulled them all from their positions.

“Stop!” Betty shouted, trying to pull FP back as Joaquin and Pete jumped to restrain the grieving husband. “Stop it!”

“You people! It—it’s all your fault! Fucking pieces of—“

“Shut the hell up!” Joaquin clamped the man’s mouth shut with his palm, snapping it back with a disgusted look. “He bit me!”

“Do you wanna draw out all the gray-skins to us!?” FP growled, fisting the other man’s shirt with a wild look in his eye.

“Get off me!” Jamie lashed out, pushing himself away from their restraint before striding off in anger.

Pete had moved to follow, but FP stuck his hand out, the other moving to wipe at the blood dripping from his nose. “Let him go. Guy’s gotta cool off.”

It was when the moon was high above them that Betty had been jolted from her sleep by the booming echo of a gunshot through the trees. FP told her to stay put as they searched for Jamie, perhaps hoping to find the man before any gray-skins who’d heard the sound were lured to their camp. But Betty didn’t listen.

Blood sprayed onto the bark above his head, she found his body resting against a tree a mile away. Eyes open, a faded polaroid rested loosely in his grip; a smiling Jamie and Carrie stared up at Betty from the picture, and between them, her eyes lingered sadly on a little girl with dark pigtails and pink ribbons.

She knelt by his body for a short while before the sound of footsteps came up behind her.

“I didn’t know they had a daughter…” Joaquin spoke quietly, letting his gaze move up to the unseeing eyes staring at them. His hand reached forward to close his lids.

“Neither did I.” Betty murmured quietly before grabbing the shotgun and standing back up. Her knees stung with the rubble pressed into them and she brushed a hand over her torn jeans, hearing the debris fall back onto the foliage below. She gave one last glance to Jamie’s body before turning around. “Come on… let’s go.”

… … …

As the sun begins to dip low in the sky, the wind picks up speed, casting a chill to Betty’s cheeks as she follows FP down a small alleyway behind a strip of outlets.

They’ve finally made it to Adam’s County.

Just a short distance away, she sees a string of abandoned cars and buildings spray painted with obnoxiously bright yellow symbols. Her breathing picks up speed when she sees one written out with the words, ‘ _Site R – SE’_

“FP, look.” She swats his arm, gaining his attention as he looks at her before following her pointed finger. “Site R. Do you think that’s part of the base?”

Holding the rifle in his grip loosely, FP observes the sign and stops walking, squinting his eyes to observe their surroundings.

“I think so.” his lips curve briefly, his eyes flickering down to her own as her heart quickens with the notably absent sense of hope at his words. "Good eye, Cooper."

Have they really made it? After nearly a year… are they truly so close? 

Betty’s stomach clenches with nerves at the prospect of them discovering the base. Is it still standing? Are there survivors? Or has it been taken over by the dead? Her palms grip her weapon tightly as she swallows her anxieties down with strained breath.

“Kind of hard to miss an ugly color like that.” She retorts lightly, scanning the area around them as they continue walking.

“Reminds me of the uniforms Pop made his employees wear back in the day.” FP snorts, a light grin on his lips as he stares straight ahead.

Betty’s chest tightens as she recalls the kind old man who’d been around to witness so many different events in her life. She thinks of the days she and Jughead would cuddle up in a booth and share headphones and eat burgers and drink milkshakes…

She thinks of Veronica ranting about another first world problem to her, and Archie playing his music for them as they laugh and joke and eat. She thinks of them when school assignments and college applications were their biggest hurdles. She’s not even twenty yet, but thinking back to those memories, Betty swears she’s aged forty years in less than one.

They were just kids. A group of kids striving for normalcy without really knowing it.

“Bet you didn’t know your mom worked there.” FP speaks with a reminiscent lilt to his voice. Glancing at her, Betty feels her eyebrows shoot up at his statement.

“At Pop’s?” she questions with an air of incredulity.

“Oh yeah.” He tilts his head, slowing his pace without noticing as she steps alongside him. “Complained about that uniform every time I saw her. She even tried to get Pop to change the color several times.”

Betty blinks at FP, dumbfounded by the discovery he even knows that type of detail about her mother. Looking to her worn out boots briefly, Betty makes a face. “I didn’t even know you two had been friends.”

FP’s silent for a moment before he looks back ahead, licking his lips and putting on that apathetic face she’d seen Jughead revert to so often. “We weren’t.”

Betty’s curious to ask more, but there’s a niggling feeling of pain in her chest that prevents her tongue from moving. She hasn’t thought of her mom for a while now, and the thought of her mother, young and vivacious—demanding Pop to change something as simple as an unflattering color of a work uniform—Betty feels her eyes burn with tears.

No, she shakes her head.

We move on, she thinks.

Taking a deep breath, Betty forces herself to focus on the now.

FP’s hand darts in front of her, halting her steps before a gunshot rings out, startling the daylights out of her. Feeling a sharp sting to her cheek and hearing the clang of a bullet hitting the stop sign behind her, Betty’s heart leaps into her throat.

_“Get down!”_

She’s yanked to the floor by FP, his body folding over her like a shield before he orders her to crawl behind a turned over bus some feet away. There are shouts in the distance and Betty’s instantly clouded with fear, her thoughts taking her back to the last run in she’d had with people.

She and Joaquin had been scouting for food and supplies in an old gas station. She’d been foolish, urging them to continue their scavenging though there was evidence people were staying there.

A group of raiders, they’d found out soon enough.

They’d swarmed them like feral cats circling a pair of helpless mice. They’d taunted and jeered, demanding where the rest of their camp was, thinking they were part of a larger group they could rob.

Joaquin had refused to give up FP and Pete’s location, spitting in the leader’s face and getting the tip of the angered man’s blade to his gut.

And Betty, _stupid, foolish_ Betty… she’d cried for them to stop. For them to leave Joaquin alone. She could hit herself now for begging like an animal to a group of heartless thugs.

Her pleading had only resulted in the man taking sick pleasure in forcing her to watch Joaquin’s throat being sliced by his own blade.

Betty was helpless as she’d awaited her own death.

But the men… they’d told her death would be a mercy.

They’d had other plans for her. Vile, sickening…

But, just as one of the men had tore loose the only shirt she had left of her fiancé, Pete had swarmed in, guns ablaze with FP behind him.

Betty wonders now if this is her and FP’s luck running out.

It had only been the two of them escaping that gas station that night, and she’s sure they’ve met their luck quota. The gray-skins, they’re easy to predict. Terrifying? Yes; but predictable.

Humans, however… raiders, thieves, bandits—whatever they were to be called now— _they_ were the unpredictable ones.

There are shouts down the street from where she and FP had been walking on only moments prior, and she scrambles to pull her pistol from her belt before a hiss in her ear has her shrieking, yanking away from the white-knuckled fingers gripping at her blouse.

FP snaps his head to her before raising his gun and shooting the creature dead.

Betty feels the warm spray of blood coat her face as her ears ring from the deafening noise the gunshot going off so close to her head had caused.

“Come on!” he yells, pulling her to her feet before pointing to a small boutique across the street. “The window’s busted open there! Get inside! We’ll go out through the backway!”

Betty doesn’t have to turn around to know the dead are upon them and whoever had been shooting at them. The grotesque smell and growls are her biggest indicators.

There’s more gunshots from down the street, accompanied with alarmed shouting. Betty doesn’t hesitate, her legs sprint to the building while her heart hammers loudly in her chest.

Glancing briefly to her left, she sees the figures of five or six people, all taking cover and shooting at the gray-skins approaching through the alleyways and street corners.

When she hears a pained grunt behind her however, Betty feels her veins turn to ice.

Spinning around, the sight of a gray-skin sinking its rotted teeth through FP’s left wrist has her world spin. She freezes on the spot.

No. No, no, no—he’s all she has left.

**_“No!”_ **

Her gun raises by sheer instinct before she’s shooting the corpse through the head, watching it fall to the gravel below with a dull thud. FP falls to his knees, clutching his arm and breathing heavily as his eyes blink rapidly. He’s in shock.

Running to his side, Betty shakes her head, her body in a full-fledged denial. “No. No, no, no. FP? _FP!”_

“Run.” He breathes heavily, the intent of giving her time to leave without notice clear on his face. “Betty, go.”

“No.” Betty shakes her head. She refuses to leave him behind. Another gunshot beside her has her lift her gun to shoot the nearest man aiming for them down. He falls to the floor with a grunt.

She shoots at the gray-skins moving toward them, their sickening arms outstretched with the full intent to finish the job and devour them both until they’re nothing but waste in a corpse’s stomach.

Her finger presses against the trigger until her chamber is empty, and when she comes out of her delirious state of anger, her eyes fall to FP, the older man leveling his own rifle to fire at the few gray-skins still littering the streets.

Betty doesn’t know what comes over her as she watches the flesh of his wrist dangle like a slice of lunchmeat in front of her. She doesn’t know what comes over her as she drops her gun to the floor and pulls her machete out. She doesn’t know what comes over her when she pushes him against the nearest vehicle, demanding he hold still.

When her arm raises, FP’s eyes widen, his body tensing as realization sets in. “Betty! _Wait_ —!”

Her blade cuts through the flesh in one swipe, the force of her movement elevated in strength due to her adrenaline. She tries to ignore his tortured cry at the impact of her blade as she yanks her backpack off, pulling a thick sweater out and wrapping it around the stump now pumping blood out like a fountain.

She tries to push the burning acid in her throat back down to her gnarled stomach as she realizes the error in her impulsive decision to severe the appendage.

She hadn’t even made a proper tourniquet to stop the blood flow… she hadn’t…

“Oh god… S-stay with me, FP.” She whispers shakily, watching his face become paler and paler as her eyes bug out, staring at him in stunned stupor. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

Her hands tremble as she presses the sopping fabric against his flesh, and her body rattles.

Betty is so lost in her own shock, she fails to hear the footsteps running up behind her. She thinks nothing but her own failure before something heavy slams against her head.

And then, black.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd - i have to say, all your comments have been giving me so much life!! 
> 
> thank you all so much, lovebugs!

* * *

 

> ▱◯♕
> 
> _You know_  
>  _I’m done_  
>  _And I’m doomed_  
>  _With a gun against my head_  
>  _Gun against my head_  
>  _Alone myself I stand_  
>  _—Delta Spirit, Running_
> 
> ◯

_“I don’t know how I’m going to survive two weeks without you.”_

_Jughead could feel Betty smile against his chest before she pulled away to give an affectionate swipe of her thumb across his chin. “We’ve been apart for longer times before.”_

_“True…” He replied, running his hands down the curve of her waist while they cozied on her small twin bed. At nearly four in the morning, he knew time was dwindling down until his flight took off for New York, and he’d be stuck helping his mom take care of her estranged sister. “But we weren’t dating then.”_

_“Scared you’ll forget about me?” she teased in a softer voice, pressing a kiss to the angle of his jaw and moving her lips down to the side of his neck._

_Jughead sighed in deep contentment, happy to have her in his arms and reluctant to let her go. “Betty, I don’t think anyone who’s met you would be able to.”_

_Betty raised her brow at him, pulling away from the skin beckoning for her touch. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”_

_“As you should.”_

_They laid in silence for a few minutes, both soaking up the time they had left until he was pressed to leave._

_“Just think,” Betty spoke up quietly, running her hands through his unruly hair and looking up at him with her baby blues. “By the time you get back, I’ll have everything packed up, and we can finally start planning for the wedding.”_

_“I still say we elope.” Jughead grunted, feeling his eyes droop at the soothing motion of her nails running over his scalp._

_“Yeah, and have my Mom and Veronica flip out at me?” Betty chuckled, trying to keep from smiling. “No thanks.”_

_“Hm,” he sighed, closing his eyes and dropping a kiss to her lips. “As long as you’re there, I don’t care where it happens.”_

_“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, Juggie.” She’d responded in her soft voice, full of genuine love he’d taken far too long to accept wholeheartedly._

Jughead remembers the taste of her lips and the feel of her breasts against his palm. He remembers the way she’d driven him to the airport in her little beat up hatchback as his own truck had been at his father’s house awaiting repairs.

Looking down to the gold key in his palm, Jughead stares at the thin necklace, remembering the last words she’d spoken to him before he boarded the plane.

_“So you don’t forget me.” Betty grinned playfully, alluding to their earlier banter in bed as she closed his fingers around her most precious jewelry. “Don’t lose it!”_

“Hey, buckethead!”

A familiar voice jolts Jughead from his thoughts, prompting him to look down at the woman coming out through the gate leading to the base below. He stuffs the necklace in his pocket and props his elbow on his knee before she’s making her way up the slope to approach him.

When she’s a few feet away, Jughead barely manages to catch the item she’d flung at him without warning.

“Found these on the run.”

Jughead stares down at the faded seafoam colored box in his hand, turning it over to snort at the text. _Newports_. A brank new pack, too.

It’s been months since Jughead’s had a cigarette, and luckily for him, his lighter still rests in his chest pocket, of which he quickly reaches into to pull out.

“Brought a whole bundle back for you.”

“Figures people would leave behind the shittiest brand.” Jughead responds wryly, raising one up to his lips to light. He feels her stare still on him and glances her direction, her brown eyes burning holes into his skin uncomfortably. “Thanks, Jeanie.”

Jeanie. A tall and tanned woman—a former school teacher—only a few years older than him, smiles brightly, pleased with his gratitude.

When she sits beside him, brushing her knees against his, he frowns through his cigarette and tries to discreetly inch away so there’s distance between them. Jughead pretends he doesn’t notice her face fall at the movement.

“You guys are back early.” He speaks, eager to change topics. “Everyone back okay?”  

He heaves a sigh of relief when she takes the bait, shaking her head and rubbing a hand over her eyes in a tired motion. “Barely. We got in a scrap with some freebooters and biters. Jerod’s down in the infirmary right now.”

“He bit?” Jughead frowns deeply, thinking of the friend he’d escaped New York with. Pressing the butt of his cigarette into the dirt, he turns his head toward her, awaiting her answer with concealed anxiety.

“No.” she shakes her head, alleviating his fears. “We made our drop off in Fairfield and ran into a couple of nutcases. First we thought they were more freebooters but… I don’t think they are. Neither did Donny. Some girl and an older guy.”

“Hm.” Jughead acknowledges noncommittedly.

“She took a shot at Jer, but the bullet only grazed his side.”

He continues to listen to her recount the trip taken by their community’s best scouts and feels his shoulders relax in knowing his friend hasn’t been fatally injured. He has no interest in the crazies out on the road.

“Donny brought them back with us. The girl and the guy.”

“What?” Jughead grimaces, facing her as he thinks of their ‘Chief’.

Jeanie leans forward, lowering her voice. “The guy was bit. And his girl, she _cut_ his hand off. Literally in the middle of a biters swarm! Just lifted her sword and _—_!” she makes a wide gesture, mimicking the slice of a blade coming down on her arm. "Said we could use more people with nerve like that around here.”

Jughead blinks at that, not sure how to feel about the information. “She… Has the guy turned yet?”

It was common knowledge nowadays that when you’re bit, you die. But you don’t just _die_. You come back, as one of those things.  

“No.” Jeanie shakes her head, eyes wide and whispering like she’s about to spill some type of revelation. “That’s the thing! He passed out in the truck but Corina was able to stabilize him. I heard her saying the girl probably saved his life. If you cut off the bite… well…”

Jughead can’t listen to any more.

He stands up and stuffs the pack of smokes in his pocket.

“I’m going to go see Jerod.” He lies before pulling the radio at his belt and informing one of the other watchers to take his place for night duty.

“I’ll wait until someone gets here.” Jeanie tells him, rising to her feet slowly as she regards him with worry she’s said something wrong.

Jughead ignores her concern and nods before tossing his radio at her and making his way down to the gate, slipping through and walking the half mile through the bunker’s tunnels and headquarters. He passes the infirmary, pausing briefly in debate to check on his friend before he decides to come back later.

Right now, he needs to check on Jellybean.

He sees his mother in his mind as he walks through the dark corridors, his flashlight on with the candles emitting low light from their positions on the floor. Jughead sees the bite marks on her calf as she’d fallen over, too feverish to move on as they’d passed the border into Pennsylvania.

If he had known you could just cut the bite away…

Would he have been able to though? Would he have been able to bring a weapon down on his mother’s leg? If it could have saved her, he likes to think he would’ve.

There’s hushed talking as Jughead approaches the other exit across the bunker, and he steps out into the resident compound, back into the night air. Littered across the heavily guarded field there are small buildings—a tiny community he assumes was once filled with important political figures and government officials. The warning signs for trespassers now hang against the reinforced walls surrounding them all like rusted decor. 

Jughead stuffs his hands into his pockets and walks to the community’s bedchambers—a firehouse that’d had enough beds and facilities for the small group of fifty-two to rotate through their specific jobs and shifts.

There are people around him doing their own thing as he makes his way into the building silently. When he approaches the bed at the far end of one of the rooms, careful to not wake the others sleeping around them, Jughead notices his sister already asleep.

Body sprawled out, her mouth open, he feels some of the ache in his chest ease. Reaching out, he tries to be gentle in scooting her over as he slips into the sheets beside her. Unfortunately, his presence stirs her from her slumber and he exhales defeatedly, knowing now there’s no way he’ll get rest as long as she’s awake.

“Jug?”

“Go back to sleep.” He whispers, stretching his arm out as she cuddles into his side. “It’s late.”

“Are you okay?” she questions, furrowing her brows up at him before recoiling. “Ugh, you smell gross.”

Clapping a hand over his mouth, Jughead yawns and smells what she’s talking about. He definitely smells like cigarette smoke.

Turning his head, he watches as Jellybean scrunches her nose in disgust. Her hand reaches up to pull at the beanie on her head—his old, ratted crown beanie—over her eyes and nose, sticking her tongue out. “Oh, god! Go brush your teeth!”

Jughead rolls his eyes and tugs the fabric back into place over her locks, and the edges of her hair peek out through the brim of it in tangled curls. She’d chosen to keep her hair short... A wise choice, he thinks; especially after the incident with their mother.

“Melodrama doesn’t suit you, JB.” He grunts, trying to keep from smiling at her dramatization. “Go to sleep.”

“We should go visit Jerod.” Jellybean ignores him, forcing a noisy exhale of exasperation from his chest. Though he feels concerned his friend was shot at by some crazy lady, Jeanie had said he was fine.

Jughead though… he’s been on watch for twelve hours.

He’s exhausted. He’s hungry.

He wants to go to _sleep_.

But Jellybean, even in her spurt into adolescence, she knows exactly how to play him. If he wasn’t so smitten with her, he’d be annoyed. Jughead thinks he admires her resilience the most out of all her admirable qualities. She’s smart, even for her age. But he’s scared of what the effect on the things she’s seen will have on her.

He doesn’t know if it’s because she’s a teen now or if it’s the trials they’ve fought through on the road before making it to the base four months prior, but she’s thirteen going on forty-five, and her eyes are far too aged for any young girl to carry.

Her lip is jutted out in impatience and her hand moves to shake his elbow lightly. “Come on. I went earlier but there was yelling in there! Jeanie told me to scram until things calmed down.”

Jughead frowns at that, thinking of the strangers Jeanie had mentioned being brought to their safe base.

Now he _really_ doesn’t want Jellybean going.

What if these people were dangerous? What the hell was Donny thinking, bringing in rouges off the street?

“Yelling?” Jughead asks, brows pinching together. “About what?”

Jellybean leans forward, a surreptitious tone to her voice as she whispers. “Some lady was yelling about being separated from whoever else was with her. Donny wanted to interview her, I think, but Corina said something about letting her stay with her partner until he woke up.”

“Did they catch you eavesdropping?” he raises a brow, slightly impressed with her sneaking around their chief and doctor.

“Jeanie did.” Jellybean grumbles, looking displeased. “She didn’t even let me see Jerod to make sure he was okay. She was too busy trying to find _you_.”

“How about this,” Jughead sits up, ignoring the distaste in her regard to her unofficial ‘teacher’. Raising his hand up as she opens her mouth to protest before he can even speak his proposition, he continues. “I’ll go make sure things are cooled down, and if they are, I’ll come get you. If not, I’ll check Jer for myself and we’ll go back together in the morning.”

“But—“

“Come on, work with me here, Jellybean.” He cuts her off, reigning in his irritation. “I’m exhausted. Just listen to me this once.”

“I can take care of myself, Jug.” She insists with a pinched look.

“Take it or leave it.” He retorts, scooting to the edge of the bed and throwing a look over his shoulder. “Or I’ll tell Jeanie you volunteered to do storytime with the kids tomorrow.”

Her mouth falls at his threat before she snaps it shut with a glare and a huff. “Ugh, fine. Just don’t take long!”

Jughead places his hand on her beanie covered head and gives it a light shake, the glare on her face softening to one of annoyed affection. “Hurry up.”

“I’ll be right back.” He promises before standing back up and trekking back the direction he’d came. The soles of his shoes slap the group with each heavy step taken and his fingers itch to pull out another cigarette. He needs to conserve them however, so he refrains and instead stuffs his hands into his pockets.

A few people on wall duty greet him in passing, but he doesn’t stop to chat. When he reaches the infirmary, their only base Doctor is standing out in the corridor with one of her trainees, going over some paper in her hand.

They stop talking at Jughead’s approach and the older woman smiles kindly at him, though it’s a bit fatigued at the corners.

“Jughead.” She greets, placing a hand on her trainee’s shoulder. “Can we help you with something?”

He clenches his fists lightly in his pockets, fidgeting on his feet.

“Uh, yeah…” he looks between them, feeling more uncomfortable the longer they stare. “I heard Jerod took a bullet today. Just want to make sure he’s alright.”

“Ah, Mr. Nettings.” Corina nods, looking to the closed door leading into the medical room behind them. “He’s resting right now, but I can assure you he’s doing well.”

“Great.” Jughead responds flatly, not entirely pleased at being passively denied. “I’d still like to see him.”

There’s a brief hesitation on the physician’s end, and Jughead speaks up again, wanting nothing more than to make sure his friend was fine so he could pass the message to his stubborn sister and go to sleep before he has to be back out at the gate in four more hours. “Look, I already know about the other people. I’m not looking to stick my nose in anyone’s business. I’ll just be in and out.”

There’s a few more seconds of stretched silence, the wide-eyed trainee looking back and forth between them both before Corina finally sighs in defeat while forcing a tired smile back to her face. “Alright. But try to be quiet. Most of my patients are asleep.”

“Got it.”

When she steps to the side, allowing Jughead to go in, he scans the dimly lit room for his friend. Then, he sees them.

His whole body is immobilized, and he knows he’s suddenly hallucinating.

A few tables down he sees the ghost of his father, lying flat on his back, eyes closed but chest moving rhythmically, up and down. Up and down.

Jughead’s feet are glued to the floor, his breathing completely stopped in witnessing the blonde woman over his father’s form.

She’s sitting on a chair beside him, her hand resting on his forehead in a protective manner. Her cheek is red and swollen, most likely due to the stitched wound that looks raw and fresh on it. The hand not resting on him rises up to wipe at her nose, her sniffles pulling Jughead from his frozen position.

The air from his lungs rushes out of him in a noisy exhale.

Her gaze looks up in his direction at the sound and Jughead sees the moment recognition takes over. Eyes widening larger than he’s ever seen them, her spine snaps into an upright position.

Jughead remains in place, absolutely terrified that this is another illusion conjured by his mind; that if he moves, they’ll vanish completely.

“…Jug—Jughead?”

Her voice, it’s like rain washing over burnt fields in the middle of a drought. It’s hoarse and small, but… it’s _real_. She’s real. She’s _here_.

“Betty—“


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd
> 
> one chapter to go!

 

>   
>  ▱◯♕
> 
> _"One of these days the mountains_  
>  _Are gonna fall into the sea and they'll know_  
>  _That you and I were made for this_  
>  _I was made to taste your kiss_  
>  _We were made to never fall away_  
>  _Never fall away"  
>  —Civil Twilight, Letters From The Sky  
>  _
> 
> ◯

Jughead doesn’t really have time to process what he’s feeling when Betty stands up, for the moment she does, he takes a step forward and she’s suddenly falling.

The stand beside her carrying the tray of bloody tools used for, what he assumes her stitching, crashes to the ground as her body fails her. The clatter and clang echo in the silent room, but Jughead’s unconcerned and at her side in an instant. His breathing ceases as he checks for her own.

At the low but steady pulse, Jughead releases the air from his lungs in a giant whoosh.

“What the—What did you do?” Cornia’s scolding voice is muffled through the pulsating beats through his ears, and when her hands come into vision to grab Betty, Jughead snaps his gaze to her. He can barely form the words on his tongue as he hoists her in his arms.

She’s so light. Jughead feels bones where he once remembers soft flesh, and he feels sick. Was she starving? How long had she been out on the road? Why was she with his father? _How_ was she with his father?

Then, Jeanie’s words from earlier register in his brain.

_“The guy was bit. And his girl, she cut his hand off.”_

_“I heard her saying the girl probably saved his life.”_

Jughead glances to his father, feeling his chest constrict painfully at the sight of him—pallor, sickly… there’s a bandaged stump where a hand should be, and Jughead blinks repeatedly before focusing back at the situation at hand.

“Put her here. Carefully!” Cornia says sternly, clearing off the top of a nearby desk to lay her on.

“Is-is sh—“ his words are whispered and hitched as he lowers Betty onto the surface, but keeps his hands on her waist. Licking his lips and clearing his throat, he tries again. “Is she okay? Is she going to be okay?”

Corina gives him a puzzled glance before checking Betty’s unconscious form over. After a few minutes, she steps back and turns to Jughead. “She’s fine. Her vitals seem to be okay, but it’s obvious she’s malnourished.”

“She…” Jughead breathes a sigh of relief before cupping Betty’s cheek. It’s slightly cold, but there’s enough warmth there to reaffirm that she’s here. He’s touching her. He’s not actually hallucinating.

“Do you know her?” Corina’s face suddenly softens into sympathetic curiosity.

The door to the infirmary opens as Jellybean bursts through, a grimace on her face and an apologetic Jeanie behind her.

“—I’m sorry. I tried to stop her, but—“

Jughead tears his gaze away from Betty in time to see Jellybean take notice of their father a few feet away. Jeanie’s apologies are tuned out, and though he loathes to let Betty go, he tears himself away and takes a step toward his sister.

“Is that…” her grimace gone, Jellybean stares wide-eyed at FP before rushing to his side, staring in abject horror to the bloodied bandages over his arm. “Wh-What happened? Where’s his…?”

“You know this man?” Jeanie walks over, Corina following with her own curiosity still not quelled.

Jellybean takes FP’s right hand gingerly, her own trembling with disbelief and uncertainty.

Jughead’s worry for how his sister is taking this is overshadowed by the colossal amount of other feelings vying for his attention. He doesn’t know what to feel, but he clutches Jellybean’s shoulder reassuringly as he stares at his father.

“He’s…our dad.” Jughead answers, throwing the two other woman into shock with it.

“What?” Jeanie breathes out, stupefied. “Your father?”

“Is he going to die?” Jellybean manages smally, curling her hand tighter around FP’s as she swivels her head to catch Corina’s gaze. Eyes misted over, she looks over to Jughead and parts her lips. “Jughead—?”

“He’s not.” He shakes his head, turning to Corina. “You said he’s stable, right?”

The Physician takes a second to gather her bearings, still obviously surprised at the odds of a family finding each other in their circumstances.

“Y-yes. Yes, he’s stable. He’ll be in pain when he wakes up, but he’s pushed through the worst of it.” She moves closer to them, staring down at FP. “I had no idea cutting the infected area could prevent…well, turning.” She continues, turning to gesture to Betty’s still form. “When I asked her how she knew, she said she hadn’t either.”

Jellybean finally takes notice of the blonde lying a few feet away, her jaw dropping in even more shock before her eyes snap to Jughead’s. “Betty,”

“So, you do know her?” Corina asks as Jughead lets go of Jellybean and walks back over to Betty, clutching her hands and feeling his throat close at the engagement ring on her finger. It’s stained with dirt and dried blood, but the glint of the diamond he remembers having to ask Veronica about, it peeks through and seizes all breath from him.

Jughead nods at Corina’s question.

“She’s my…” his thumb brushes over the ring and doesn’t miss the abrupt flicker of Jeanie’s eyes following the motion before he finishes. “..wife.”

Nuptials be damned.

Betty had found him.

His father hadn’t known where he was going, Betty had. Through a static-y phone call filled with the fear of never seeing her again, Betty had heard him. She’d heard him and traveled states to get here. She’s covered in scars both seen and unseen, he’s sure.

Jughead’s eyes fill with tears and his throat tightens.

Her devotion in finding him transcends any vows they could have made to one another. Guilt that he hadn’t tried going back to Riverdale hits him with brunt force, but he’s glad he hadn’t. Otherwise they may have never seen one another again.

“…Wife?”

Betty’s fingers twitch in Jughead’s grip and he ignores everything around him as his body folds over her own, slipping a hand up to cradle the cheek not wounded. Eyes clouded over and heart in his throat, Jughead exhales with baited hope. His breath casts the flyaways over her forehead and when her eyelids begin to twitch, he drops his head briefly in relief before looking back up at her.

“Betty?” he breathes out, brushing his thumb over her skin in a soothing motion.

Betty groans weakly in pain before her eyes flutter open.

Jughead licks his lips and can’t help the racing of his heart in his chest when her baby blues blink up at him, coming to. They immediately cloud over with tears and her face contorts in disbelieved astonishment.

“J-Juggie—“ she chokes out, tears finally falling loose.

Jughead clutches her neck and crashes his lips onto her own, cautious of her injuries. Though chapped and brittle, the feel of Betty’s lips on his own bring him to absolution. He’s in a state of euphoria, lost to the world around them as Betty responds with desperate eagerness.

Her arms close around his neck and he can taste the salt of their tears slipping through their clumsy kiss.  

When she pulls away, Betty heaves out a sob and sits up to embrace him tightly. She’s gripping him, pulling him close as if he’ll disappear, and Jughead knows exactly the desperation she feels as he reciprocates with equal fervency.

“Jughead,” Betty cries into his neck, her shoulders shaking.

His fingers weave themselves into her matted hair as he trembles, kissing every part of her he can reach—the crown of her head to top of her forehead. He clenches his eyes shut, thanking a God he doesn’t quite believe in for having her back in his arms. “God, Betty—“

“I c-can’t believe—“ she digs her fingers into the fabric of his jacket, the sting of her nails through the fabric a pain he welcomes unreservedly.

As Corina and Jeanie step away, moving over to FP’s unconscious side where Jellybean still stands, Jughead doesn’t move. He wishes he didn’t have to—wanting to stay frozen in this moment for all time, he grasps onto what he can before their embrace must end.

“You’re alive.” Jughead breathes into hair, clenching his jaw tight to keep his emotions in check. “You’re safe.”

Betty’s breath upon his neck, Jughead makes a promise with himself as he repeats the words. She’s safe, and he swears he’ll do everything and anything to make sure it stays that way.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd - okay, so i lied. 
> 
> there will actually be one more chapter after this one. 
> 
> enjoy! xoxo

 

>  ▱◯♕
> 
> _“True love never sleeps.  
>  It dances in your dreams.”  
>  —Topher Kearby_
> 
> ◯

There’s something there between Betty and his father. The way she stares with tearful eyes, a nose red and shadows in in her gaze. Trust, Jughead recognizes. A bond he knows they’ve developed through the horrors they’ve faced together.

It bothers him only in the sense that he hates they had to experience the horrors at all. He can’t quite fathom the gratitude he has for Betty and her quick thinking, and he can’t describe the gratitude he has in his father for protecting Betty (which he has no doubt that such was done).

Jellybean’s fallen asleep by FP, her insistence in staying there with them held with little rebuttal. Her small hand cradles his in her own, and across from them, Jughead watches as Betty keeps hers upon his clammy forehead.

His father still hasn’t woken up in the hours he’s been there.

“How did you two get out?”

Betty turns to Jughead and gives a long pause before speaking.

“I went to pick up your truck,” she explains quietly, looking between FP and Jughead. “On the day it happened, I—Your dad took me out of Riverdale, but, we went back after a few days… for my—for my family.”

Jughead reaches forward to grab her free hand, his chest tight with the gaps in her voice of words left unspoken. “You don’t have to tell me. If you’re not ready.”

A tear slips loose and her lip quivers before Betty tugs him gently to her, resting her head on his chest. When she speaks, her voice is but a whisper. “Thank you.”

Jughead’s heart aches in wondering what terrors she’s witnessed exactly, but he knows not to push it. He knows when the time is right—when the wounds aren’t so raw—she’ll tell him.

When she sits back in her seat, he doesn’t miss the flinch of pain that flickers across her face.

Brows furrowing, Jughead scans her body in concern. “What’s wrong?”

Bending slightly, her fingernail scratches the cuffs of her boots, and he catches a glimpse of irritated skin underneath.

“My feet,” she tells him quietly before he’s out of his seat and unlacing her boots.

Blisters and sores, Jughead winces in sympathy to the sight of her injuries. Socks mopped and flaked with blood, wet and dry, he tosses them to the side and tries to ignore the exhales and small whimpers of pain she emits.

He knows the infirmary well, and with a soft order to Betty not to move, he fills a small basin of water and grabs a clean rag before kneeling before her.

It’s quiet in the room, their breathing accompanied by the few slumbering people around them, and now the light slosh of water every time Jughead dips the cloth into it before carefully tending her wounds.

Betty hisses and fidgets, but after a while, the cooling sensation feels just the slightest bit nice. For Jughead however, he doesn’t know how she managed to walk at all when her feet were so bad.

“I’m so sorry…” he whispers, shaking his head as his fingers run tenderly up her wet ankle, regret in not being there with her— _for_ her. “I’m sorry, Betty.”

Betty only stares at him with clouded eyes before her own fingers are running through his hair, reassuring him silently that while she’s not okay right now, she _will_ be. “It’s not your fault.”

“Why didn’t you tell Corina about this?” he questions, looking up at her briefly as he wrings the water out, the stream of tinted red flowing like a scarlet river into the basin below.

“I don’t know her.” Betty answers simply with a set to her jaw. “I don’t trust people I don’t know.”

 _Fair_ , he thinks, nodding his head silently before tossing the rag into the bucket and nudging it to the side with his foot. “Do you want me to get one of our people to wash your socks for you? It won’t get the stains out, but they’ll be clean at least.”

Betty tenses up and shoots her hand out to grab his forearm, startling him slightly. “No!”

“Hey! Hey, hey!” he stands quickly, cupping her cheeks as his heart races at the pure panic on her face. “Betty—“

“Don’t go!” she shakes her head, clutching the fabric of his shirt and digging her nails into his skin painfully. Blonde wisps of hair sway as her head jerks in a negative motion. “Don’t leave me, Jughead! You can’t—“

“Betty, hey!” his eyes flicker over her face before he drops his forehead onto her own, holding their gazes as he stares intently at her. “I won’t go. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here,” he reaches down to uncurl the digits in his shirt and lays them flat against the center of his chest. “I’m right here. See? I’m not going anywhere.”

Betty’s still shaking, but her face loses its tensed lines as she takes in his fervid words.

“Stay…”

One word, but the emotions behind it pack a strong punch to Jughead’s gut, and he swallows the knot in his throat before kneeling to pick her up. Her hands move to wrap around his neck automatically as he carries her, and it’s only a few steps away before they’re squeezed together on a nearby gurney.

Betty presses herself flush against him, seeking his warmth while placing her hand back to his chest to feel the rhythmic beat of his heart beneath. Jughead plays with her hair idly, the texture of it coarse and brittle, but still tangible— _here_.

“I’m never leaving you, Betty.” Jughead swears, the ferocity in his intent palpable in his promise. Her face nuzzled into his neck, he feels the shaky breath she releases. “Never again.”

Betty fidgets against him and lets her fingernail toy with the loose button on his shirt before she speaks. “…you can’t promise things you can’t control, Juggie.”

There’s weight to her words. A slamming hit of reality. Jughead can’t control whether they’ll always be together from here on out or not, but he swears he’ll kill to make sure they will, and he tells her as such.

“Hold me.” Betty whispers, closing her eyes at his intense proclamation.

Jughead dips his head and tilts her chin up before kissing her softly, slowly. He can taste the tears and blood and deep-rooted grief on her tongue. She’s no longer honeysuckle hair and cherry lips, but she’s _Betty_ , and he’s an addict rediscovering his drug all the same.

Her breathing picks up as her fingers tangle themselves in his hair, and he fights a moan at the sensation before placing his hands at her waist and pulling away, reluctant to push her.

“Betts—“

“Make love to me.” Betty breathes up at him, eyes wide and full of trust. Her fingers slip to the waistband of his trousers and there’s a moment of hesitance on his part at their location before she’s speaking again. “I’m vulnerable and hurting, but I want this—I want _you_.” She quells any hesitancy rising within him at her firm declaration. “I never thought I’d see you again. I, I gave up believing you were alive…”

“Betty,” he furrows his brows.

He’s not hurt she believed that, not in the slightest, but it’s apparent she’s gutted by it, if the pinched look on her face or agony in her tone is any indication.

“I love you so much, Jughead,” she manages through a tremulous exhale, reaching up to cradle his face as her tears come more freely. “I can’t lose you twice. I-I can’t.”

“I’m not going to let that happen.” He says firmly, because he _won’t_. He refuses to lose her twice. His face is set seriously, and Betty takes a few moments to soak in his determination. When she expels a large sigh of acceptance at his words, Jughead kisses her softly and speaks against her swollen lips with aching earnest. “I love you.”

“Then love me.” Betty breathes, her lips against his and eyelids fluttering closed as her body relaxes in his embrace. Her love offered to him, Jughead is weak-willed to refuse—not that he wants to.

In the dim glow of the infirmary, under the covers of the gurney they lay nestled on, Jughead and Betty make love. It’s slow— _agonizingly_ slow; but each stroke of his hips paint the promise he chants over her lips in ragged breaths. He wants her to know there is nothing that can come between them anymore, not even death. Their spirits are bound in this life and the next. But right now, they’re here, together. Inside her, she takes him as if he’s an extension to herself.

Jughead can’t see Betty’s body in the darkness, but he feels her—he feels _all_ of her. Warm and welcoming, she’s everything he remembers, and for the first time in so long, he feels absolute peace. When Betty cums, crying his name in a near inaudible hitch of her breath, Jughead follows close behind, kissing the slick curves and juts of the skin he can reach.

There’s no disturbance in the room as he pulls her pants back up her hips before doing the same for himself, the occupants around them still blissfully unaware of their coupling. Between them, however, their love is loud. The air crackles and the tingles on their skin glisten with the afterglow of their synchronized bodies.

Against him, Jughead counts each breath Betty takes as he strokes her hair, listening to her soft sighs of content. Two hundred and five, he gets to before she drifts off.

When his own eyes begin to droop, he can only revel in the feel of her pressed against him before he succumbs to sleep, completely unaware of the twitch from his father’s arm a few feet away.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd
> 
> hope you enjoy this final chapter, love you all xoxo

>  ▱◯♕
> 
> _“Don’t let the shadows of yesterday  
>  spoil the sunrise of tomorrow.” _
> 
> ◯

Jughead doesn’t remember how he started smoking, but it’s a little late to feel guilty for bad habits. On watch again, he let’s his rifle rest in the crooks of his bent elbows as he sits for a minute to have a smoke.

The container is in a terrible state now, but the three cigarettes inside it are unharmed. Plucking one from the case, he sticks it between his chapped lips before tucking the box back into his jacket’s breast pocket. Over the tunnel of their sanctuary, he finds himself distracted by who’s inside.

Nearly four days ago, Betty had found him.

She’d saved his father and brought them both here, to him—to Jellybean. There’s absolutely no way he can articulate the rapid rush of emotions he’s experienced since that time. Letting his eyes close for a moment, Jughead remembers the feel of Betty’s skin pressed against him; he focuses on the way her heartbeat pulsed through her skin and into his hand, reassuring him that she wasn’t a hallucination. Releasing a wavering breath, he recalls the panicked cry Jellybean had given out when he and Betty had fallen asleep that night of their reunion.

There’d been a stirring from FP, and then a groan.

He’d feared the worst, remembering the sunken lifeless eyes of his mother the last time they’d seen her, and had made quick work of bolting from Betty’s drowsy embrace to yank his sister away from their father. Face scrunched in fear, Jellybean had clung to his sleeve as Betty was finally roused from her sleepy disturbance.

She’d been fearless in throwing herself over FP’s body, pressing her ear to his chest—completely unaware of just how terrified the action had made Jughead. The images his mind produced of potentially witnessing the love of his life being torn apart by his own father’s turned state had him frozen in terror. He’d wanted to call out to her, to _get back_! But all he managed was a choked sound from the back of his throat before Betty heaved a sigh of relief and turned her head to FP’s parted mouth, lowering her ear there as well and listening for breath.

“He’s alive.” She’d whispered to them with audible relief.

Jellybean had wiped her tears away and stepped from Jughead’s protective stance to clutch her father’s hand. “Daddy?”

There was no reply on FP’s end except a shallow exhale and a full body shiver.

When Jellybean left to get Corina, Jughead had finally managed to move and yanked Betty close, clutching her in his arms and feeling her own heart through the thin material of their shirts; or, maybe it was his own racing heartbeat, pounding furiously against his chest as he tried to calm himself back into a pre-panicked state. He’d held her close when Corina arrived, awakened from her own sleep by Jellybean, and he’d held her close when she’d stated that FP wasn’t looking good.

That had been days ago, and now, his father lays immobile even still.

He thinks to the worry in both Betty and Jellybean’s eyes. He thinks of how long he’d gone his life thinking his father was unreliable—yet, he is now the sole reason his Betty is here with him at all. From what she’d explained, Jughead gathers his father had put his life on the line for her more than once.

She’d opened up about Polly and Rose on her third day with him, opened up about her family and their friends…His chest clenched painfully in hearing every word.

Jughead listened as Betty explained his father had tried to bring Rose back but failed…he listened as Betty explained how much she clung to FP—not just because she cared about him, but because FP was the only thing she had left connecting her to _himself_.

In turn, Jughead told her about New York. How the man she unknowingly almost killed had been the man to help keep him, Jellybean, and his mother alive from the city’s catastrophic implosion. He whispered to her his mother’s fate, about how she’d been bit by one of the corpses—told her how it hadn’t taken even a full day for Gladys to slip away from them, only to reawaken and try take a bite out of Jellybean’s cheek when she’d been grieving.

When Jughead revealed to Betty that he’d reacted out of pure instinct, digging his dagger into the flesh of his mother’s forehead before realizing the what he’d done, she’d clung to him and ran her fingers through his hair soothingly. The guilt still eats at him, but Betty’s presence is like a salve, and her touch is all the healing he needs.

There had been no other words exchanged about their experiences in their time apart, just a silent agreement that they would no longer have to face the horrors of this world alone anymore.

“This still means something to me.” Betty had whispered to him the day prior as their bodies squeezed close on the twin bed they were sharing. With Jellybean refusing to leave FP’s side, it was just the two of them and they were taking full advantage of the semi-privacy. At her words, Jughead looked down to where she’d guided his hand, and the sharp ridges of the diamond his finger fell on gave his heart a stutter.

He swallowed the dry feeling in his throat and stared at her, reveling in the heat of her flesh against his own. Twirling the band slightly, his eyes held her own seriously. “I don’t want to be apart again. Ever.”

“Jug,” her eyes had softened at his fervent tone.

“This is just a ring, Betty.” He whispered to her, bringing the jewel up for them to look at together. “It can be lost or stolen. It’s just a thing, and it won’t matter if those things happen because, what you and I have is something no one can touch or take away.”

He had wanted to say that she _was_ his wife, and they didn’t need rings or papers to make it so. He wanted to say that she was so much more that that, and any other declarations of his eternal devotion to her, but her lips were suddenly on his and the words dissolved on his tongue. In her kiss, he found that he didn’t have to tell her. Betty knew.

She always knew.

“Hey, you.”

Pulled out from his thoughts, Jughead looks up to see Jeanie coming up toward him.

A drag of his cigarette fills his lungs with a heavy burn before he flicks the butt away and exhales a deep puff of gray, billowing smoke where Jeanie sits herself down in. Her hands grab the rifle off his lap and she nods her head, giving him a small smile.

“I’m relieving you.”

“What?” he furrows his brows. “Why? I’m supposed to be on duty until morning.”

Jeanie follows his gaze as he looks out into the sky. The first rays of sunshine is here, red awash with the soft glow of yellow and orange, it paints the sky with the color he so recently grew to hate. Red, the color of blood. On his clothes and hands, it stains everything it touches, even memories.

Now though, he thinks he can appreciate the sunrise once more.

“I’m sorry.” Jeanie tells him quietly, sounding guilty as he turns back to stare at her confusedly. He’s about to ask for what when she speaks again. “I… I had no idea you were married. I wouldn’t have—I didn’t,”

Jughead frowns and looks back toward the sunset. “Don’t worry about it, Jeanie.”

“I feel embarrassed.” She tells him with short, abashed laugh. “I practically threw myself at you.”

He’s uncomfortable now, because he knows she’s harbored some type of attraction to him since he came to Raven Rock.

“I was married, too.” She continues, grabbing his intrigue with this detail he didn’t know. Despite not having feelings for her, Jughead _does_ consider her a friend. Her face is pinched with distress as she explains. “Divorced. When all this happened, I… He and I shared custody of our five-year-old.”

Jughead licks his lips and feels his heart sink as she reaches into her vest to pull out a small photo of a laughing boy. The lines on Jeanie’s face are tight as she stares at the photo. “It wasn’t supposed to be his weekend to go with his dad, but Jeffrey’s parents had flown in town for only a couple days and I said okay.”

Jughead gingerly takes the photo from her offered hand and doesn’t want to imagine how deep the loss of a child is if the one felt for his mother is as strong as it is.

“That was the last time I saw Jayden.”

Handing her the photo back, Jughead frowns deeply and watches as she wipes at her eyes. “I’m sorry, Jeanie.”

“I think I was attracted to how well you take care of Jellybean.” She tells him, a wry curve to her lips. “You’re loyal and you genuinely care. I guess I thought there were no more guys like that left.”

He doesn’t know how to respond.

“I just hope—I mean,” She glances out of the corner of her eye as the sun finally dips into the horizon. “I still hope we’re friends.”

“We are.” He nods.

“Seeing you and Betty together…the way you guys look at each other, it reminds me of my parents.” she says, shaking her head with a light smile. “They always said they were soulmates.”

Jughead is about to reply when he notices someone darting out from the tunnel beneath them, brown hair whipping from the speed of their sprint. He stands up, Jeanie following suite, prepared for an attack as his hand pulls the hatchet in his belt.

“Jellybean?” His fear spikes right up until he sees the beaming smile on her face.

“Jughead!” she calls out, waving him to come down. “Come here, quick!”

Sharing an understanding nod with Jeanie, Jughead maneuvers himself down until he’s beside his sister and feeling her hand slip into his.

“Wh—“ she drags him through the tunnel in a run, ignoring his questions as to what’s happening before they’re in front of the infirmary. Eyes widening, he snaps his head to Jellybean. “Is it—?”

Opening the door, Jughead’s gaze first falls to Betty. She’s by FP’s side, her hand resting over his father’s forehead and tears in her eyes, it’s not an unusual sight. What _is_ unusual, is the radiant smile on her face. Jughead feels his throat close as his heart hammers with hope in his chest.

His eyes fall to his father. To FP.

Blue eyes identical to his own are open, he’s looking up at Betty and nodding his head to whatever it is she’s telling him. When the door shuts audibly behind him, however, Jughead feels six-years-old again as his father’s gaze meets his own. He feels that eager gut feeling to run to his dad and cry out in joy that he’s back with him again.

Except Jughead isn’t six, and this isn’t his dad coming home after a long day from work.

With hurried steps, Jughead is at FP’s side in an instant, letting his vision fall to the freshly wrapped bandages over his stump arm. He looks a little pale, but there’s a definite improvement from how he’d looked days earlier. Jughead swallows thickly and feels Betty reach up to rub his arm.

“Dad,” he croaks, fighting to keep his emotions in check. But when he sees his father choke back a cry as his face crumples in disbelieving joy, Jughead folds over and buries his head into his chest, staining the sheet with his tears. He can’t believe his family is here—after months of torturous separation and horrific trials, they’re here, together.

FP moves his hand up to cradle his jaw, giving a sharp exhale as he tries to keep his own sobbing in check. With Betty’s hand on his arm and his father’s on his face, Jughead has never felt more relief or peace than now. And Jellybean’s glossy eyes, staring at their dad like he’s strung the stars up in the sky himself, he finally lets loose of the rush of emotions tightening in his chest. “ _Dad_.”

“Son,” FP manages through a coarse throat, cupping his cheek. “My son.”

Betty gives out a watery laugh, her own eyes misted over with tears. “We did it. We did it.”

When FP speaks, Jughead can feel the rise and rumble of his chest and he can only repeat the mantra of ‘ _thank you, thank you’,_ in his head when it confirms there is breath there. There is life.

“We found you.”

 Betty and FP, they’d found him.

 


End file.
